FAA clears UPS delivery drones for longer-range flights

Image: UPS

UPS delivery drones are now allowed to fly longer distance flights beyond the sight of ground operators, the Federal Aviation Administration revealed in a press release on Wednesday. This is the kind of move that opens the door for drone delivery companies like Wing, FedEx, and Zip to deliver packages across a wider area and service more customers.

UPS Flight Forward, a UPS subsidiary focused on drone delivery, can now deliver small packages beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) without spotters on the ground monitoring the route and skies for other aircraft, using SwissDrones SVO 50 V2 drones. The FAA also announced authorizations for two other companies to fly beyond sight for commercial purposes. That includes uAvionix Corp. and,...

Continue reading…

Apple is reportedly spending ‘millions of dollars a day’ training AI

Image: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images

Apple is investing millions of dollars per day into artificial intelligence, according to a new report from The Information. The company is reportedly working on multiple AI models across several teams.

Apple’s unit that works on conversational AI is called “Foundational Models,” per The Information’s reporting. It has “around 16” members, including several former Google engineers. It’s helmed by John Giannandrea, Apple’s head of AI, who was hired in 2018 to help improve Siri. (Giannandrea has reportedly “expressed skepticism to colleagues about the potential usefulness of chatbots powered by AI language models.”)

Additional teams at Apple are also working on artificial intelligence, per The Information. A Visual Intelligence unit is...

Continue reading…

Clubhouse reinvents itself as an audio messaging app

Image: Clubhouse

Clubhouse is back, kinda. The app that popularized social audio rooms is reinventing itself “to be more like a messaging app” with new voice-only group chats called “chats,” as detailed in a blog post from the company.

Think of a chat as something like a group Instagram story that you contribute to with your voice. You kick off a chat by recording a voice message, and then you can send that chat around to your friends. They can then hop in and add their own voice recordings to create a kind of voice collage / conversation.

The app has been totally redesigned around these new chats. When I opened up the newly updated app, it prompted me to start a new chat and share it. Chats are also what I’m seeing first in the new home tab in the app,...

Continue reading…

X’s Community Notes feature will now include videos

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

This might finally be the end of the hurricane street shark phenomenon. X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, updated its crowdsourced fact-checking Community Notes feature to tag videos directly and automatically populate those notes onto any matching videos. The same tagging was recently added to images with Community Notes, and last week, the platform added the ability to see the number of matching images that apply to each fact-check. Now, approved Community Notes will automatically show up every time a flagged video is posted or reshared.

According to a post on the tool’s X account, a select group of Community Notes power users, known as “Top Writers” (if you have to ask what that is, you’re probably not a part of the club),...

Continue reading…

Slack’s AI tool that can recap channels and threads starts testing this winter

Slack AI can summarie channels and threads. | Image: Slack

Slack is launching a built-in AI tool that can do things like summarize threads, recap channel highlights, and search for answers within your messages. In an update on Wednesday, Slack says it will start testing the new feature, called Slack AI, this winter.

One of the features that Slack AI will offer is channel recaps, which can automatically generate summaries of messages sent on a particular channel. This could likely help you sift through unrelated chatter and catch up on important conversations you might’ve missed. The tool will be able to summarize threads, too.

Image: Slack

This is what it might look like when you ask Slack AI to search your messages.

Another handy feature coming with Slack AI is the...

Continue reading…

This one setting could be making your Instagram posts look worse — maybe

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Whenever I get a new phone and eventually install Instagram, the first thing I do is dig through the app’s settings menu for a toggle that reads “Upload at highest quality.” According to the app, when enabled, this ensures you’ll “Always upload the highest quality photos and videos, even if uploading takes longer. When this is off, we’ll automatically adjust upload quality to fit network conditions.”

But here’s the weird part: by default, this setting is switched off. Aren’t we in the 5G era? Isn’t this the social media platform where people obsess over presenting themselves in the best possible light? Why would the highest-quality uploads be an opt-in feature in 2023? And how come they buried this several layers deep in settings?...

Continue reading…

‘Hyundai Pay’ is the latest effort by car companies to make in-car payments a thing

Photo by Patrick George for The Verge

Hyundai introduced a new feature called “Hyundai Pay” that lets owners of the 2024 Hyundai Kona pay for parking at several thousand locations directly from their car’s infotainment screen. It’s the latest example of the auto industry’s multiyear effort to make in-car payments a real thing.

Users input their preferred credit card into the app on their infotainment screens, which then can be used to pay for parking at participating Parkopedia locations. The vehicle then uses its cellular connection to communicate with Parkopedia’s software to complete the transaction.

Personal details are kept secure using tokenization

Personal details are kept secure using tokenization, which replaces card account details with a unique digital...

Continue reading…

How to get started with Cinebench 2024

Here’s what you’ll see. | Image: Maxon

In early September, Maxon announced the release of a major update to its Cinebench benchmark, Cinebench 2024. The big change is that that the new Cinebench tests GPU power in addition to CPU power, whereas the previous version was CPU-only.

If you’d like to see how your PC performs on the new test, it’s now free and available for download. And if you’ve never benchmarked your device before but want to try it out, Cinebench 2024 is a great place to get started. Here’s how:

• Go to Maxon’s website and click the menu in the top left.
• Go to Products > Cinebench > Download from Maxon.
• Select the version that matches your operating system (Windows, macOS, or Windows on ARM).

Cinebench 2024 supports X86 and X64 systems.

...

Continue reading…

AMD’s RX 7800 XT is the antidote to GPU inflation

Hint: the 7800 XT is the smaller one on top. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

The most important thing about the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card, available today, is its $500 price.

In almost every other way, it’s unremarkable. Reviewers agree: its performance is often indistinguishable from the AMD RX 6800 XT, a card released nearly three years ago. (Nvidia also recently released GPUs that couldn’t always beat their two-year-old predecessors: What has the industry been doing all that time?*)

Here’s the difference: three years ago, the RX 6800 XT debuted at $649.

When you factor in inflation, that’s $762 in today’s money. The reason today’s reviews of the RX 7800 XT are quite favorable, including ours, is that AMD is cutting against inflation.

Not just standard economic inflation, by the way — also the...

Continue reading…

Max will reportedly start offering free sports later this year

Image: The Verge

Max, the streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, could soon offer sports that you can watch for free during a limited period of time, according to a report from Bloomberg. The promotion will reportedly start later this year, with Warner Bros. Discovery hoping to attract more viewers by showing live basketball, baseball, and hockey games.

You may only get to watch free sports for a few months, though, as sources tell Bloomberg that it will make viewers start paying in February or March next year. Warner Bros. Discovery currently owns the media rights for several major sports, including the National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), and others.

The company is reportedly...

Continue reading…

China bans iPhone use for government work

Illustration: The Verge

China’s government has banned officials at central government agencies from bringing foreign-branded phones, including the iPhone, into offices or using them for government work, reports The Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed sources, the article says China seeks to “cut the country’s reliance on foreign technology” and beef up cybersecurity, as well as keep sensitive data from leaking to foreign governments.

While the move broadly targets foreign-made smartphones, Apple stands out, as China remains one of its biggest markets. The country also continues to be a huge part of its supply chain, even as it transfers manufacturing to countries like India. With China as such a big part of its bottom line, Apple has made changes to its iOS...

Continue reading…

Forget AI — I just want the Pixel 8 to get four OS upgrades

Give this phone the software update policy it deserves, Google. | Image: Google

If this year’s I/O was any indication, we’re going to hear about AI a lot at next month’s Pixel 8 launch. AI for your videos, AI for your text to the babysitter, blah blah blah. Fine. But there’s something else I’m hoping to see in the next generation of Pixel phones, even if it’s not quite the attention-getting feature that AI is: four years of OS upgrades.

Samsung does it. Xiaomi just announced it’s doing it. Even OnePlus is doing it. So why is Google — the company behind Android — still only offering three OS upgrades for its flagship phones when a growing number of other OEMs are promising four? Sure, most Pixel phones launch with the latest OS version, so in some cases, those three OS upgrades are actually even-steven with other...

Continue reading…

Amazon has ended its periodicals program, and independent publishers are panicking

Books, yes. Magazines — maybe. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

I like short stories. I read them, and I write them. I grew up subscribing to and reading The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, and a bunch of others, some genre, some not. And as I got older, I began to understand the financial tightrope that many of these independent periodicals walk — a tightrope funded by contributions, subscriptions, the occasional ad, and perhaps a second mortgage.

I also understood that any resource that makes it a bit easier for these pubs to find and keep readers — like the ability to gather subscribers through Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program — can make all the difference in keeping the books (and their walk on that tightrope) balanced.

Until that resource goes away.

No...

Continue reading…

Pixar’s Elemental will hit Disney Plus streaming on September 13th

A still from Elemental_._ | Image: Disney / Pixar

Disney has announced that Disney Plus subscribers will be able to stream Elemental, its parable about interracial relationships, beginning September 13th. The company is also releasing a making-of documentary for the film, called Good Chemistry: The Story of Elemental, and an Up-related short called Carl’s Date for its streaming service.

Our own Charles Pulliam-Moore praised the film’s visuals in his review for The Verge. But he felt the racial framing suffered, partially from the elements-as-people metaphor but potentially also from the writers’ eagerness to avoid mistakes made in Zootopia.

Elemental, which had a $200 million budget, managed to pull in $480 million on its box office run, according to Disney, despite a mediocre June...

Continue reading…

New YouTube face just dropped

Image: MrBeast

The faces on YouTube thumbnails might start to look a bit different. A lot of thumbnails feature a person with an open mouth in shock, awe, excitement, or horror because of a belief that the open-mouth face entices people to click on a video. But MrBeast, the individual with the most subscribers on YouTube, said Wednesday that he’s starting to see longer watch times on videos where his thumbnail face has a closed mouth instead of an open one.

You can see his results for yourself thanks to some screenshots he shared on X (formerly Twitter) of what appears to be YouTube’s creator dashboard. The screenshots don’t include numbers about differences in watch time (and that metric doesn’t necessarily translate to more views), but they all show...

Continue reading…

Bob Iger and Bob Chapek’s CEO battle made Disney the pettiest place on Earth

Disney CEO Bob Iger. | Image: Neilson Barnard / Getty Images

When Bob Iger stepped down as CEO of Disney in early 2020, he butted heads with his handpicked successor, Bob Chapek. But we really didn’t know just how bad — and how petty — some of the things Iger did to express his unhappiness with Chapek’s decisions were until now.

This report from CNBC gives us a glimpse at what went on behind the scenes at Disney, spanning from Chapek’s appointment as CEO in 2020 to Iger’s eventual takeover in 2022 — and let me tell you, some of the drama that went on here is akin to Cinderella with CEOs. Here are the pettiest moments we learned about.

Keeping the big office with the private bathroom

Despite his departure as CEO, CNBC reports that Iger wasn’t ready to give up his “expansive” office at Disney’s...

Continue reading…

Here’s where you can preorder Sonos’ new Move 2 speaker

Sonos’ second-gen Move looks similar to the prior model but is now available in a new green shade. | Image: Sonos

Four years after releasing its first portable speaker, the Sonos Move, Sonos has finally given it a refresh. After months of leaks and rumors, the company has officially confirmed the Sonos Move 2 will arrive on September 20th for $449.

As expected, the Move 2 comes with some significant improvements, which is perhaps why the new Move costs $50 more than its predecessor. According to Sonos, it features true stereo sound and can seamlessly switch from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi. It also boasts twice the battery life as the original Move, allowing it to last up to 24 hours on a single charge.

We have yet to test the Move 2, but the original model is our favorite portable Sonos speaker, so we have high hopes. You’ll have to stay tuned for our...

Continue reading…

The Boy and the Heron’s first trailer is a glimpse at Miyazaki’s next dark fantasy

The Boy and the Heron. | Image: Studio Ghibli

One of the most secretive films of the year just got a little less mysterious with the first trailer for The Boy and the Heron. The latest film from Studio Ghibli and perhaps the final feature-length project from famed director Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron premiered in Japan in July.

In the lead-up to its debut, Ghibli was refreshingly vague in discussing the film, which is also known as How Do You Live (and based on Genzaburo Yoshino’s novel of the same name). Prior to the trailer, all fans had to go on were a few still images, simple plot descriptions, and the teasiest of teasers.

For more on the film, be sure to check out our review from its Japanese premiere. But if you want to go in completely spoiler-free, here’s the...

Continue reading…

YouTube is experimenting with longer but less frequent ad breaks on TV

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is considering changing how and when it shows ads during videos on its main app on connected TVs. One of those changes is more infrequent but longer ad breaks that won’t interrupt what you’re watching as often.

Instead of showing short ads interspersed throughout a video, YouTube is trying out longer chunks of ads for non-Premium subscribers that appear in the middle of the content. It’s still not clear how long these new ad breaks will last, as Nicky Rettke, the head of YouTube’s ad products team, tells The Verge that there isn’t a set length.

“There are a lot of factors that go into deciding when to show an ad break... so it’s a bit dynamic,” Rettke says. “The overall change is that we’re going to continue to have those dynamic...

Continue reading…

Amazon just added support for bridges, but Matter is still in a bind

The Eve Thermo Control is one of the first devices to use a Matter feature called binding. But as of now, none of the smart home platforms support it. | Image: Eve Systems

Bridging older smart home gadgets into Matter is finally fully supported, and cameras are on the horizon, but the new smart home standard still has plenty of unfulfilled promises.

Continue reading…

US military planning to fund fleets of ‘small, smart, cheap’ drones

Image: Celal Gunes / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Pentagon is considering expanding its fleet of drones and autonomous systems in the next two years, possibly enhancing it with AI.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the Department of Defense plans to develop AI systems “intended to be small, smart, [and] cheap” to counter threats from China and other countries.

The Journal said Hicks will announce plans to add more capabilities to the country’s network of drones and sensors that monitor military activities in other countries. One such possibility is a fleet of solar-powered “distributed pods of self-propelled [autonomous] systems” that can provide near-real-time information. The department may also look into autonomous ground-based...

Continue reading…

The first episode of Pokémon: Paldean Winds is a crash course in treasure hunting

Arven encountering a Ceititan in Paldean Winds | The Pokémon Company

The mainline Pokémon anime is sure to eventually delve into much of the magic and mystery shaping the new region Scarlet and Violet are set in. But the new Pokémon: Paldean Windsweb series gets right to the business of showing you just what the young trainers matriculating at Naranja (and presumably Uva) Academy are really getting up to as they embark on their grand treasure hunts.

Paldean Winds’ first episode — “Breathe Out” from director Ryohei Takeshita and writer Teruko Utsumi — introduces Ohara (Cat Protano), Alquis (Paul Castro Jr.), and Hohma (Caroline Spinola), three Naranja Academy students who are all at different points in figuring out what unique goals they want to achieve as part of the school’s Treasure Hunt course work....

Continue reading…

The Spectrum / Disney blackout led a US Open player to pirate the US Open

Photo by Sarah Stier / Getty Images

Whenever there’s another of these drawn-out carriage disputes between cable providers and content owners — and they happen often — I always say that the customers are the ones who get hurt the most. Last week, nearly 15 million Spectrum subscribers abruptly lost their ability to watch ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned channels right as Labor Day weekend got underway — and smack dab in the middle of the US Open. In the days since, Disney and Spectrum parent Charter Communications have been throwing blame back and forth like a hot potato.

But many people are getting fed up with the blackout, and this includes the US Open athletes themselves. “I guess in a lot of hotels, they have Spectrum, so I cannot watch it on TV anymore,” Daniil...

Continue reading…

Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 are $200 off

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 starts at $799.99. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

The new iPhone 15 may be just around the corner, but if you’re an Android lover looking for a phone that’ll stand out, Samsung’s newest foldables might fit the bill better. Right now, you can buy the unlocked Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 starting at $799.99 for the model with 256GB of storage from Amazon.

Unlike many popular phones on the market, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a 6.7-inch flip phone that can fold in half to fit in your pocket. Compared to its predecessor, it comes with a larger, 3.4-inch front cover screen that makes it easier to respond to texts, check your calendar, and interact with apps. It’s also faster thanks to the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, while its IPX8 rating against full water immersion offers extra peace of...

Continue reading…

Dictionary.com adds a bunch of AI-related words

In another sign generative AI has pierced through mass consciousness, Dictionary.com has added generative AI, GPT, and LLM to its list of words.

It also expanded the definition of hallucinate in the context of generative AI, where it means to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present the information as if it were true.

The site, which also runs Thesaurus.com (aka my best writing friend), announced 566 new entries and 348 new definitions for the fall of 2023 “as the dictionary works to keep pace with the ever-changing English language.”

Other new words or expanded definitions include nepo baby (a celebrity with a famous parent), jawn (something or someone that doesn’t need a specific word), biohacking...

Continue reading…

Google rolls out file locking for Workspace customers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is rolling out a new feature to Google Workspace customers: the ability to lock Google Drive files.

While a file is locked, no one with any level of access can make edits, comments, or suggestions; essentially, it’s in read-only mode until you unlock it. The company wrote in a blog post announcing the change that file locking started rolling out to Rapid Release domains yesterday and will do so over the next 15 days, while those on Scheduled Release domains will start seeing it on September 20th, also with a 15-day rollout period.

Restricting a file in Google was already something you could do with the Google Drive API or through file approvals — a similar feature that lets you, say, request approval for a draft that’s locked...

Continue reading…

YouTube’s latest experiment is playing games

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is trying out games as its next experimental offering. The company is adding a new “Playables” section on the site that will include games that can be played on both the desktop website and mobile devices. Playables will only appear for “a limited number of users to start,” and there was no list of game titles published at this time.

9to5Google reports that one of the games to grace the new YouTube Playables experiment includes Stack Bounce, which involves a 3D ball bouncing on top of rings you must smash through with well-timed clicks. If you’ve heard of the game before, it’s because Google already offers it on its minigames service, GameSnacks.

To check if you’re included in the games experiment, look for a new “Playables”...

Continue reading…

Polestar is working on its own smartphone to seamlessly sync with its luxury EVs

Image: Getty

Polestar has found another product to slap its logo on, and it’s not an electric car.

The Swedish-based, Chinese-owned EV maker will launch its own smartphone in December, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath told CNBC at the IAA Mobility auto show in Munich, Germany, this week. The phone will be produced by Xingji Meizu, a smartphone company owned by Polestar’s parent company, Geely.

It doesn’t sound like this will be an attempt to challenge China’s major smartphone makers like Apple and Oppo. Rather, this will become a way to highlight all the ways in which Polestar’s technology-packed cars are basically just computers on wheels, Ingenlath told the network.

It doesn’t sound like this will be an attempt to challenge China’s major smartphone...

Continue reading…

‘Modern cars are a privacy nightmare,’ the worst Mozilla’s seen

Tesla was the worst offender out of all 25 car brands reviewed in the report. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you’re wondering which gadgets have the worst user privacy practices, it turns out the answer may be parked outside. According to a report published by the Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday, cars are “the official worst category of products for privacy” that it’s ever reviewed. The global nonprofit found that 92 percent of the reviewed automakers provide drivers with little (if any) control over their personal data, with 84 percent sharing user data with outside parties.

Best known for its open-source Firefox web browser, the Mozilla Foundation claims to “stand up for the health of the internet.” It’s produced several reports and guides under its “Privacy Not Included” series over the years that detail how products and services like m...

Continue reading…

Sonos announces Move 2 speaker with stereo sound and 24-hour battery life

Image: Sonos

The Sonos Move 2 will be released on September 20th for $449, the company announced this morning. I’ve already reported extensively on the new product, which is Sonos’ third portable speaker after the original Move and much smaller Roam. There are several meaningful improvements to the second-generation Move: it will output stereo audio (the original was only capable of mono), offer more than twice the battery life of its predecessor, and the speaker has redesigned controls that match those of the recent Era 300 and Era 100.

The external design is very similar to the original Move. This is still a hefty “portable” speaker, but at least there’s still a built-in handle for carrying it around your home (and outside). Inside the Move 2 are...

Continue reading…